Overturning the Ediacara biota: community structure of the oldest animal ecosystems

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The first systematic excavation of serial fossil beds of South Australia's famous Ediacara biota will lead to an integrated study of the oldest diverse macroscopic assemblages of life on Earth. Once the preservational and biological components of the record have been separated, Ediacaran fossil beds can be treated as 'snap-shots? of benthic marine communities. This will enable the use of palaeoecological tools to determine which if any of these Precambrian fossils were members of animal groups that heralded the Cambrian explosion of animal life.